Educational devices to assist children in developing manual dexterity and in learning drafting or drawing skills are well known in the art, and representative examples are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,918,732 issued Dec. 29, 1959, United Kingdom Patent 411,964 patented June, 1934 and United Kingdom Patent 580,598 patented September 1946. These devices, and others like them, permit a child to trace drawings on a transparent sheet which snugly overlies a previously prepared drawing or artwork. These devices include not only the transparent sheet upon which the child is to trace, but may also include the drawings which the child is to trace. As shown in U.K. 580,598 the educational toy may also include a plurality of pencils or pens. The devices shown in these three patents have the disadvantage in that in all cases the final image is placed upon a transparent sheet, which sheet is typically designed for future reuse. Therefore images drafted by the child will eventually have to be erased.
It is also known from West German Patent Application 2,024,430 (published Dec. 9, 1971) that a kit may be provided having a plurality of stencils which will permit the child to trace stenciled images upon a sheet of paper. Various stencils may be combined when utilizing this educational device. While this device does not preclude free hand drafting on the part of the child, no provisions are made for tracing. In addition, there is no teaching of transferring the stenciled images from the original sheet to another surface, which surface may have an irregular surface and therefore be unsuitable for initially stencilling thereon.
It is also well known in the printing industry that silk screened images, typically formed from oil based inks, may be transferred from an intermediate surface to an article which may have a non-planar surface, this process being known as pad printing. Representative patents which show this form of printing are U.S. Pat. No. 5,054,390, granted Oct. 8, 1991 and United Kingdom Patent 737,461, published Sep. 28, 1955. This commercially known printing process typically utilizes an oil based ink which was printed onto a flat transfer plate or sheet and then transferred to the final object, typically having a non-planar surface, by a deformable rubber-like transfer pad. This process has particular application for printing upon irregularly shaped articles, such as bowls, where it is not possible to print onto the irregularly shaped article using conventional flat plate printing techniques. Because of the use of oil based inks, this process is not considered suitable for use by a child. In addition, the pads are relatively expensive, may be damaged easily, and require great care when cleaning ink from the pads after each use.